As said earlier I'll be talking about being a parent. College and CUMSA parent of course. No matter how you look at it, this is a hugely interesting topic. I'll try to put everything clearly through without mentioning too many names.
I had parents of my own to begin with. CUMSA parents were sources of answer to my queries before I arrived. They also provided great support especially at the start of the term. Still remember the nice good Yongsheng always cooked last year. There were not much family gathering in any sense, and I would primarily attribute it to the dysfunctional family make up.
College families were a bit different. I have a grand total of 5 parents, 1 dad and 4 mums. That's definitely an super-alpha male here. Anyway, they are absolutely amazing people. A good bunch of friends, and are very caring to us. Sometimes I feel sorry for them because we as kids never clicked. One of us was outgoing and had great conversations with them. Another one was cool. Then there was another international student like me. Both of us are very shy to begin with and were by default limited in conversation topics. We tried some form of gathering other than the compulsory first two sessions, but they never worked out great. I still managed to see a great deal of them at Stokes talks, but nothing else interesting happened.
I'm not sure how typical our family was. From talking to other people the some really happening things occur in college families. Some kids seem to get along with their parents really well. There were not enough data to do any serious analysis, but I have to admit I was disappointed. The initial cultural and academic shock have put some irreversible damage to my social interactions. The effects are still reverberating up till now.
Now back to the main point of being a parent. We as the college parents are a group of close friends. Half were from my old CC corridor. And as per norm I have a very big college family, with six parents and five kids. We made sure it is a science only family with only Medic, Natsci, Compsci and Engineers. This was done to prevent possible estrangement in the family, or any split that would occur along the subject line.
We have some of the most amazing kids. They are nice to talk to, and great to mingle with. There are nobody who feel very left out or extremely quiet. First faimly night was great with great conversations. Then there was Much Ado About Nothing. Family formal followed by the Life, which was only the second time I went to clubbing in Cambridge. I have to admit it was rather fun. One of the dad was always busy, but he always provided us with all the outing ideas. The family ended the term in a high when we went to watch The Freshers Pantomine at the ADC. It was a great performance and better still to leave the memory with the family. The kids were so sweat that they bought us wine on that day. But the sad reality is that I'm not the person who can strike a conversation easily, and with the all persistent East-West cultural boundary I'm not very close to any of them. I still feel contented, but will try to do more.
The advantage of a big family is that there is a higher chance to get along with at least one person. The disadvantage is that, it's too big. Yes now i'll talk about the small CUMSA family. I only has one kid, and thus one wife, but at least this time the family had a proper gender ratio. I would have to say that my daughter and her mum are very similiar in many aspects. Both are very outgoing and sociable, and crazy to a certain extent. In fact, the daughter was doing so well in social life that I think she didn't really need a family to help her along. Don't get me wrong, She is very nice person and great to have conversations. But just that didn't "inhereit" much of my genes. The strange thing is that I didn't get to see my CUMSA family that much. Still to have some Singaporeans/Malaysians in college was great.
College family are most active during Michaelmas term. Its function will decay rapidly and approach zero after that. Nonetheless I hope there will be more family gathering, who won't?
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